How much sugar is good for me?

Sugary foods and drinks can cause tooth decay, especially if you have them between meals.

Many foods that contain added sugars also contain lots of calories, but often have few other nutrients. Eating these foods often can contribute to you becoming overweight. Being overweight can increase your risk of health conditions such as:

What is sugar?

All sugars are carbohydrates found naturally in most foods. Their main nutritional value is in providing energy. However, sugar is also added to lots of foods such as sweets, chocolate, cakes and some fizzy and juice drinks.

In the ingredients list, sugar added to food may be called:

glucose

sucrose

maltose

corn syrup

honey

hydrolysed starch

invert sugar

fructose

How much sugar?

Added sugars shouldn’t make up more than 10% of the energy (calorie intake) you get from food and drink each day.

This is about 70g for men and 50g for women, but it varies depending on:

your size

your age

how active you are

Fruit juice and honey can also count as added sugars, as they're sometimes added to foods to make them sweeter.

Fruit juice is still a healthy choice (one 150ml serving counts towards your 5 A DAY). However, the sugars can damage your teeth, so it’s best to drink it with a meal and no more than one serving a day. This is because sugars are released during the juicing process. Sugars in whole pieces of fruit are less likely to cause tooth decay because they are contained within the food.

You shouldn’t cut down on fruit as it’s an important part of a healthy, balanced diet.

Check food labels

Read the nutritional information on food labels to see how much sugar the food contains. Remember that sugar has many different names. The nearer the beginning of the ingredient list the sugar is, the more sugar the product contains.

Look for the "Carbohydrates (of which sugars)" figure in the nutrition label to see how much sugar the product contains for every 100g:

more than 22.5g of total sugars per 100g is high

5g of total sugars or less per 100g is low

If the amount of sugars per 100g is between these figures, that’s a medium level of sugars.